In the slowly recovering U.S. economy, there is a bright spot that continues to grow brighter – the language services industry. The industry for translation and interpretation services is doing extremely well according to a number of recent reports, and is only expected to continue growing.

While most industries were hit hard during the recession, the language industry has continued to grow – with jobs doubling over the last 10 years, and wages steadily increasing. This growth is expected to continue through 2022 when the number of jobs is expected to grow some 46%, making it one of the nation’s fastest growing occupations.

The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) reported that from 2004 to 2012 the number of translating and interpreting jobs in the U.S. doubled from 25,000 to 50,000. This number did not include self-employed free lance translators and interpreters. Taking free lancers into account the 2012 number is estimated to actually be about 63,000, according to a separate Labor Department survey.

Additionally, the median annual salary for translators and interpreters rose from $44,500 to $53,410 between 2004 and 2012, with more and more translators even achieving six digit salaries. The independent market research firm, Common Sense Advisory, estimates the industry as a whole to now be worth approximately 37.2 billion, a 6.2% increase from 2013. Experts predict the industry will be worth some $47 billion by 2018. Globalization, U.S. demographic changes and the internet are all factors in this booming industry, and although many expected that growing technology in machine translation would cut jobs in the industry, some feel the opposite is happening. Lillian Clementi, a French translator, recently explained to the Miami Herald that Google Translate and other advances in technology only seem to be increasing demand for language services by adding attention to the industry. “Even Google doesn’t use Google Translate for their business documents,” she explained. Bill Rivers, the executive director of the National Council for Language and International Studies in the Washington region explained that it is companies like eBay and Amazon that interact with customer in their own language throughout the whole globe that really drive the demand for “translation and localization.” Companies everywhere are tailoring their content to better match changing demographics. This is even becoming important for dialects of the same language. For instance, “trousers in London are pants in Miami. And of course, words like pop and soda can seemingly vary by the neighborhood.”

Despite the expectation for the industry to continue to grow, experts are also cautioning that the recent days of double-digit growth are most likely behind us and we should expect to see steady moderate growth in this industry in the years to come.